Are these drives worth buying? These drives add value to your business by enabling your employees to quickly share their files and back-up folders reliably in your NAS solution. WD Red Pro is ideal for archiving and sharing, as well as RAID array rebuilding on extended operating systems such as ZFS or other file systems. The N300 hard drive delivers fast data transfer speed up to 274 MB/s(8). Get more in Toshiba N300 vs WD Red comparison.
Toshiba N300 NAS 8 TB 3.5″ SATA 6Gb/s 7200 rpm 256 MB Hard Drive
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Pros & Cons – Toshiba N300 vs WD Red
Toshiba N300
Pros
- Great NAS features
- Reliable
- Very good speeds
- High capacity
- Reasonable price
Cons
- Overkill for non-NAS devices
- Not the fastest NAS drive
WD Red
Pros
- Excellent price point for this capacity
- High mixed sequential workload performance
- Low heat
- Low noise
Cons
- Weak random performance
Specifications – Toshiba N300 vs WD Red
Toshiba N300
- Form factor: 3.5-inch
- Interface: SATA 6.0 Gbit/s
- Capacities: 4TB, 6TB, 8TB
- Rotational speed: 7200 rpm
- Buffer size: 128MB
- Dimensions: 147 (L) x 101.85 (W) x 26.1 (H) mm
- Weight: 770 g max.
- Box content: 3.5-inch internal hard drive – N300 High-Reliability HardDrive
- Supported drive bays: up to 8
- RAID support
- Workloads: 180TB/year
WD Red Plus
Capacity: 10 TB
Cache Size: 256 MB
Disk Speed (RPM): 7200rpm
Interface: SATA
Cache Size (MB): 256MB
Transfer Rate: up to 215MB/s
Compatibility: Designed with CMR technology for small or medium-sized businesses in RAID-optimized NAS systems with up to 8 bays. Perfect for handling increased workloads, including expanded OS compatibility and ZFS.
Recording Technology: CMR
Dimensions (L x W x H): 5.787″ x 4″ x 1.028″
Price – Toshiba N300 vs WD Red comparison
The Toshiba N300 series comes in three high capacities: 4TB (the one we’ve reviewed here), 6TB and 8TB. The 4TB version costs £120 (around $160, AU$200), while the 6TB version will set you back £200 (around $260, AU$350), and the 8TB version costs £250 (around $320, AU$440).
Price differences are much greater in the premium segment. At Amazon, the 10TB Red sells for $370 and the 8TB for $247. When it comes to hard disk drives, the highest capacity available always comes with a heavy premium due to demand from both home users and business owners.
Compare Toshiba N300 vs WD Red
| Toshiba N300 12TB NAS 3.5-Inch Internal Hard Drive | Western Digital 10TB WD Red Plus NAS Internal HDD | |
|---|---|---|
| Cache Memory Installed Size | 256.00 | 256.00 |
| Digital Storage Capacity | 12 TB | 10 TB |
| Hard Disk Rotational Speed | 7200 rpm | 7200 rpm |
| Hard Disk Size | 12 TB | 10 TB |
| Hard Disk Form Factor | 3.50 inches | 3.50 inches |
| Hardware Interface | SATA 6.0 Gb/s | SATA 6.0 Gb/s |
| Item Dimensions | 5.79 x 4 x 1.03 inches | 1.03 x 5.79 x 4 inches |
| Item Weight | 1.70 lbs | 1.70 lbs |
| Size | 12 TB | 10TB |
What are the key differences – Toshiba N300 vs WD Red?
Design
Toshiba N300 has a standard 3.5-inch design which means it can easily be installed in PCs, servers and NAS devices, but not laptops. The high capacities are welcome, and its fast RPM means it delivers very good data transfer speeds.
The WD Red Pro HDDs are of the standard 3.5 Inch form factor. The enclosure of the drive is an all metal, silver color build with red trim at the top and bottom, the latter indicating that it is of the Red Pro line of hard drives. Also on the front of the WD Red Pro is information pertaining to its capacity, model number, and specifications.
Read and write speed
With the Toshiba N300 4TB hard drive reaching sequential read speeds of 210MB/s, and write speeds of 209.2MB/s in the CrystalDiskMark benchmark test.
Meanwhile the IronWolf 10TB, another NAS-orientated hard drive, scored 250.2MB/s read and 229.2MB/s write, offering both faster speeds and larger capacities.
WD Red
The 10TB has twice the amount of DRAM (256MB) and increased sequential performance of 210 MB/s. That’s much higher than the 8TB’s 178 MB/s. Western Digital doesn’t publish performance for the four-corner specifications (random and sequential read/write) like we see with solid-state drives. The company only lists a single sequential rating and no random performance specifications.
Rotational speed
Despite throttling the speeds when temperatures get too hot, Toshiba is still bullish about the transfer rates the N300 can achieve, claiming speeds of 200MB/s. This is achieved thanks to a 128MB buffer, and a rotational speed of 7,200 RPM, which is faster than the speeds of many NAS-orientated hard drives, such as the WD Red, which spins at only 5,400 RPM.
Alternate of Toshiba N300 vs WD Red
Western Digital Red NAS Hard Disk Drive
SPECIFICATIONS
- Interface: SATA 6Gbps
- Capacity: 1TB – 12TB
- Cache: 64BRPM: 5400
Pros
+Large capacity hard drive
+Performs better than rival 4TB models
Cons
-Average multi-drive small block sequential transfer speeds
It was only a few years ago that Western Digital’s 6TB NAS was the pack leader, offering more storage space than you could get from competing models. While that’s no longer the case, it’s still a unit with capacious storage space. Designed for both business and consumers, it offers fast performance especially in multi-drive environments where it boasts strong large-block sequential read and write speeds.
Editor’s recommendations
- Compare Toshiba N300 vs Seagate IronWolf – which is best NAS HDD?
- Samsung 870 QVO SATA III 2.5 SSD 4TB (MZ-77Q4T0B) review – is it good for gaming?
- SanDisk 128GB Extreme Pro (525MB/s) CFast 2.0 memory card review
- Compare WD Red Plus vs Red Pro – when you should you it?
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